Slums
by Bohemian Flute
Summary: It's a grim city now, and they've been confined to the slums by an utmost tragic end. AU.
1. Slums

**1.) Slums

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**

Grime was better left clinging to the gutters.

When they first moved into the apartment, she found it was just about the ugliest, grittiest little place in the city. It was only in the mere beginning of the first month during Ba Sing Se's early capture that the soldiers sought to justify their cruel endeavors by covering the back ways of a provocative-looking alley. Though that wasn't for the benefit of the soldiers themselves, the civilians not having to look at a practically condemned building covered in homeless and dancing poor folk may just have been. Hiding the eyesores of the city was beneficial to everyone _except_ its residents.

Just beyond the garbage trough was where the gypsies sprung and danced for their money—was where Katara saw them that first time and felt a wave of relief in the fact that these shameless women were artists... and _just_ artists. But on one hot summer afternoon, the day was spent breathing in the smoke and smog of a none-too-pretty pipeline obstructing the 'dazzle' of everything else going on. With the rats scurrying and the bugs and spiders dangling about, the lot of those whimsical performers packed up what little they had and cut loose, leaving the old dead end vacant and covered in wall sludge.

These times weren't good times.

In correspondence, Katara would always, _always, _have something to say in regards to her new home's unkempt corridors, its splintered tables. The comforts of walking in from a long day out in the shop could only be contested by the couple some hundred seedy merchants waltzing about, practically looking to grope a pretty lady arranging books, right? Letters to Suki mentioned the place being downright _gruesome_—the whole of it a winding hierarchy of street urchins, dancers, artisans and working people trying to save a scrap or two for dinner the next day. She was barely holding on down in the slums, with _Zuko_ trying, trying, _trying_ all the time, day and night, to set a steady course when they both knew there wasn't one to take.

That _stupid_ boy was the only company Katara ever had besides a couple of accompanying dogs seeing her over down at the shop. By La, each and every night she wondered and questioned why she ever agreed to this—this city, this setting, this life. After returning from the book store, she'd slave over some pathetic little pot of rice and he'd come back in the same ridiculous getup—a lousy old apron—smelling like tea herbs and spices and plopping lazily on the nearest cushion before veritably passing out. And while rationing and living under the harshest of conditions were completely her forte, trying to survive in such a hopeless, filthy, _creaky_ apartment governed by gold mongers was hardly something she could handle without a bit of _life_—on his end—to keep her going.

"Why are we even here, Zuko?" she asked one evening—scrubbing a leftover hunk of meat from a dish in that corner of hers, clinking porcelain and metal together when finally a turn of the heel had the woman facing him with a pleading look in her eye—"It's been months… " Months often turned into years and years turned into decades. If all she had to look forward to were _decades_ of that same old undermining silence of his, well then… "We have to do something before we're _stuck_ here."

But all Zuko had to say to that was, "We're already condemned"—a response met with the broken shards of something glass hitting the floor, an impulsive "We should be out there _helping_" coming from the waterbender and echoing through their small enclosure of a kitchen.

Nothing answered a quiet, annoyed "With _what?_" on the young prince's end, however. Normality askew (as they often argued with what to do, how to fight, where to go when their business here was "done") Katara turned, practically forcing herself to finish those dishes… left to her own devices and wondering about fallen friends, lost battles, cunning sisters, _kings_.

Four years, was it? Of all of the ruthless ends to stories, both hers and those of her friends, never once did she believe she would be _condemned_—as he so eloquently put it—to the trash mines of a downtrodden city. In four years, the Fire Nation had taken the world under an iron fist, with a guard stationed at the base of every governmental building, with a following so ridiculously fierce that even _she_ knew a battle sought would be lost in the end.

Quietly placing the last dish among its perch in the rack, Katara breathed, and thought, and through every question of faith, humanity and common good she was left to wonder… Where had the world _gone_ from their ideals?

Buried in the slums?

"I don't know."

* * *

_Not sure if this constitutes as a drabble series. It's sequential but... y'know, these aren't really 'chapters' per se. :x I don't usually write fic, so yeah. Whatevs. Gonna try to update weekly so enjoy, I guess?_


	2. Sixteenth

**2.) Sixteenth

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**

Their sixteenth month together was the hardest.

The usual nightly clamor hadn't felt right in that _reckless _way anymore—the way the headboard knocked against the wall, or the way the sheets were somehow rumpled in a messy pile before dawn. Every cold autumn morning they'd wake with nothing more than essence of each other clinging to their skin, only to roll out of bed and throw something on to keep whatever bit of decency either of them had left at that point. Sometimes it just felt sick.

Nothing but heavy breathing and the familiarity of a couple of strangled noises could be heard throughout the bedroom, but the hallways of their living complex were always another story. Windows never rattled on their own.

What caused the commotion was exclusive to the evening fall, as it brought forth this sharp tension between a screeching set of strings, cats and pieces of scrap metal hitting the walls. "S'a barbaric symphony of bureaucrats," a neighbor once put it—this old curmudgeon waving a cane about the air to demonstrate his frustrations to the world beyond. Some nights, Zuko would venture an almost-repetitious, "Scare any of them off, yet?" on his way back home from work. That much earned a gruff snort, had the exiled prince smothered in vile profanities that his neighbor just couldn't keep as he'd smiled to himself, walking back up the stairs.

Though as confrontational as that little old man was, he hadn't the gall to backlash the pack of comment-throwing soldiers sent to guard their base. Everyone within the perimeters of that dreaded _noise_ could attest to their negligence—that a steam-powered building some blocks down had its doorways filled to the edge with coal miners and firebenders shuffling in and out like clockwork. Men with little sense of duty—or from the looks of it, recruited criminals, as they were—were what blackened the neighborhood with thick smoke 'n smog. It was really on that sixteenth day of the sixteenth month that Zuko had to question whether or not sticking to the lowest of the low in these damnable slums was even worth it anymore; it'd been _days_ since the last status report.

"Our hawk is missing," Katara said one evening—doing her dishes the 'lazy way' with just the slightest roll of her hand, bent to bend the water along. "I'm sorry… off topic," It'd been a rough segue from babbling on about raddish-dumplings to speak in favor of that stupid messenger hawk, assumedly lost amidst the storm clouds hovering overhead. When was the last time they'd said anything that wasn't related to shoveling stale food into their mouths, anyway? "But what if they captured her?"

"We'd be dead." Always the pessimist? Zuko often leant against the open window to watch the commerce sweep by below them (more than that—theft, rather). Sixteen months of haggling and stealing—one would think they'd learned how to budget the right way, or even get by with thieving a couple of apples from the merchant cart beneath the orange awning. "It's been raining a lot," he'd say. "Not safe to fly in a storm."

Perhaps the truth in this—the solemnity that'd encased his young majesty and forced him to sit and stare into nothing from that spot over the sill—was that the prospect of losing a bird to the merciless, militant, tyranny of the Fire Nation, was still too sore a spot to press. Sixteen months would cut a person deep with the loss of a certain uncle, among the other inconveniences they'd gotten slammed with over that course of time. The young man had been condemned to mourning, only to become desperate, or at least desperate _enough_ to close the door most nights and look at his flat-mate with nothing but the cruel intention to _ruin_ her for anyone else that dare lay a hand.

Even through those tough years, they'd remained friends—close enough that Katara knew he was hurting even now, and that he knew she was getting sick of him moping around all the time. Living in such close quarters would often take its toll, of course… but those first couple of months she deliberately fought to keep him away, kept the territory divided to prevent something stupid from happening.

Until she heard him crying to himself one night—that night Uncle had died—she'd believed her bleeding heart wouldn't have broken so easily. She hadn't been completely desensitized by the war, after all; most days, she felt it made her more merciful than she'd ever quite been before.

So she cuddled closer that evening in sympathy, and every night since it'd gotten needier, heavier—awkward—until she'd given in to his persistence and it came to be routine, just like everything else.

The neighbors' scrutiny was something she knew well enough not to care about now, even as she stood there falling into her routine, and could see that lost boy by the windowsill, knowing that he couldn't stand to think that maybe his bird wouldn't return from the long journey, either.

For all of the war and pain that'd hardened her heart, she just couldn't fathom how she fit into any of it—couldn't understand why he wouldn't let her kiss him when they were done, or even why they'd bother at all if it was just going to be like this.

It wasn't just Ba Sing Se anymore. Every night was the same—every night she let him, and every morning they'd endure that tremor in the hallway, wonder about a thousand some muttering voices and whether or not they were grieving about them or the army just outside.


	3. Salary

**3.) Salary

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**

There might've been enough in the budget to pay for a week's worth of food, but that never got them through a month's worth of arguments.

Even though the nights were heated and indulgent through the humidity of thick summer air, the one thing Zuko and Katara had never quite figured out was how to avoid the inevitable. Daybreak was just about the hardest for them; they'd tried a hand at dealing herbs, greasing wheels, even picking the gunk out from under the hoof of a zebrasaur, but all of that hardly ever paid for that _one_ egg they both ate in the morning—or that _one_ pint of milk they'd have to fight about drinking now or saving for dinner later.

"The water here's murky," was the opposition in Zuko's tone, spoken with a wrinkle creasing his features, perplexed by what the sink had put into his cup. "I'm getting tired of living here."

"Well then move somewhere else," was all that came from Katara's end of the room—her busy hands doing dishes, always doing dishes… forever doing dishes.

"I thought we had an agreement," he argued. "You clean the water every morning—"

"—and the dishes," she finished bitterly, as another of those fragile porcelain plates hit the floor in some sudden fit of rage that'd been kept bottled since the dawning of whenever the hell it was they got here.

"and the vegetables, and the clothes, and the apartment—for spirits' sake!"

And it was just, wasn't it? Her wrath. For all of what two copper pieces they could scrap, they'd gotten by with her doing chores, struggling by to keep her end of the bargain and keep her job, of all things. It was no secret to either of them whose pocket carried more coins… not that it mattered if those coins were barely worth the work put into them.

Though it was obvious, Zuko had to voice his thoughts clearly: "Well what do you want me to do about it?"

…And "Nothing," was as good an answer as any. Katara could spin as hastily on her heels, throwing a wet rag at him with as much ferocity, kicking her shoes off onto the dingy rug beneath the coffee table with as much bitterness as she held before, if only to spite him. "And I'm going to do nothing, and we can just sit here and do—" be "—nothing with this stupid house. Just like you want."


End file.
